May Iverson's Career Part 24

It was midnight. "T. B." was conducting the rehearsal. For three hours he had poured upon the company the vitriol of his merciless tongue. For three hours he had raced up and down the aisles of the theater, alternately yelping commands and taking flying leaps across the footlights to the stage to go through a scene himself. He had laughed, he had wept, he had pleaded, he had sworn, he had cooed, he had roared. He had been strangely gentle with the white-haired old man of the company, and wholly brutal to a young girl who was doing beautiful work. He had reduced every woman to tears and every man to smothered and stuttering profanity. And all the time, sitting in my seat in the auditorium, I had watched him as dispa.s.sionately and with almost as detached an interest as if he were a manikin pulled by invisible wires and given speech by some ventriloquist. It was all a bad dream. He did not exist. We were not really there. The things he said to the company swept by my ears like the wail of a winter wind, leaving an occasional chill behind them. The remarks he addressed directly to me touched some cell of my brain which mechanically but clearly responded. I struck out lines and gave him new speeches, scrawling them with a pencil on a pad upon my knee; I "rebuilt" the curtain speech of the second act according to his sudden notion and to his momentary content; I transferred scenes and furnished new cues while he waited for the copy with impatiently extended hand. All the time the hush of the sick-room lay around me; I saw the still figure in the great four-poster bed.

I had never seen G.o.dfrey Morris's bedroom, though his sister had shown me his study. But now it was clear in every detail--the polished, uncarpeted floor, the carved pineapple tops of the four-poster, the great windows, open at top and bottom, the logs on the bra.s.s andirons in the grate, the bra.s.s-bound wood-box near it, the soft glow of the night lamps, the portrait of his mother which Sargent had painted ten years ago and which G.o.dfrey had hung in his own room at the front of his bed. Yes, I remembered now, he had told me about the portrait.

That was why I saw it so plainly, facing him as he lay unconscious. He had told me about the four-poster, too, and the high-boys in the room, and some chests of drawers he had picked up. He was interested in old mahogany. No, he was not interested now in anything. He was "in a stupor-like," Crumley had said. "_The--crisis--is--expected--to-night._"

"Great Scott, Miss Merrick!" shouted "T. B." "Don't you realize that the woman would have hysterics at this point? First she'd whimper, then she'd cry, then she'd shriek and find she couldn't stop. Like this--"

The theater filled with strange sounds--the wail of a banshee, the yelps of a suffering dog, a series of shrieks like the danger-blasts of a locomotive whistle. Something in me lent an ear to them and wondered what they meant. Surely they could not mean that my heroine was to have an attack of hysteria at that moment in my play. That was all wrong--wholly outside of the character and the scene; enough, indeed, to kill the comedy, to turn it into farce.

"That's the idea," I heard "T. B." say. "Now you try it. Here, we'll do it together."

Something flamed within me, instinctive, intense. I half rose, then sank numbly back into my chair. What did it matter? The only thing that disturbed me was the noise. The uproar beat against my eardrums in waves of sound that threatened to burst them. My nightmare was growing worse. Was it taking me to Bedlam? Was I shrieking, too? I must not shriek in the big, quiet room where the silent figure lay "in a stupor-like."

The chair beside me creaked. Gibson had dropped into it. "T. B." and Miss Merrick were on the top notes of their hysteria, but suddenly I ceased to hear them. Every sense I had hung on the new-comer's words.

"No change," said Gibson, briefly. "None expected till three or four o'clock. Thought I'd drop in, anyway. Say"--a wraith of his wide and boyish grin appeared--"what's going on? Is _this_ your rehearsal?"

The question meant nothing to me.

"Did you see any of the family?" I whispered.

Gibson nodded.

"Miss Morris came in for a minute at midnight," he told me, "while I was having supper. I opened the door of G.o.dfrey's room an inch, too, and saw him through the crack."

"See here!" "T. B." was bellowing to a frightened boy on the stage.

"You're not giving an imitation of Corbett entering the ring; you're supposed to be a gentleman coming into a drawing-room. See? Hook in your spine an' try it. And now you're not havin' a hair-cut. You're greeting a lady. And you're not makin' a face at her, either. You're smiling at her. Smile, smile--my G.o.d, man, smile! Try it. T-r-y-y it!"

His voice broke. He seemed about to burst into tears. I caught Gibson's arm.

"Oh, Billy," I gulped, "how did he look?"

Gibson patted my hand glancing away from me as he answered.

"Very quiet," he said. "He's unconscious. The nurse said he was 'resting comfortably.' That's their pet formula, you know.

Occasionally he mutters something--a few disconnected words. By Jove, what _is_ that fellow doing now?"

I followed the direction of his eyes. "T. B." had taken one of his flying leaps over the footlights, a.s.sisted midway by a chair in the aisle which served the purpose of a spring-board in this acrobatic feat. Now he was at the right first entrance, swaggering through the open door, his hands deep in his pockets, every tooth in his head revealed in a fixed and awful grin. Yet, strangely, through the swagger, under the grin, one detected for an instant something resembling a well-bred college boy entering a drawing-room--something, too, of radiant youth, irresponsible and charming.

"Jove," breathed Gibson, "he gets it, somehow, doesn't he? One sees exactly what he's driving at."

But the little scene had faded as I looked at it, like a negative dimming in the light. The door that opened was the door of the sick-room, and the man who had entered was one of the specialists who watched over G.o.dfrey to-night. I saw him approach the bed and lean over the patient, looking at him in silence for a moment, his finger on the pulse of the thin hand that lay so still. Somewhere near a woman was sobbing. Was it Mrs. Morris, or the young girl in the wings?

I did not know. "T. B.'s" voice was cutting its way to me like the blast of a steam siren through a fog.

"Miss Iverson," he yelled. "Cut out that kid's love scene. He can't do it, and no one wants it there, anyway. You've got some drama here now, and, by Heaven, it's about time you had! Don't throw it away. Keep to it." His voice broke on the last words. Again he seemed to be on the verge of tears. "_Keep--to--it_," he almost sobbed.

I carried my ma.n.u.script to a point in the wings where, vaguely aided by one electric light hanging far above me, I could make the changes for which "T. B." had asked. They meant new cues for several characters and a number of verbal alterations in their lines. Far down within me something sighed over the loss of that love scene--sighed, and then moaned over the loss of something else. "T.

B.," his chin on his chest, his eyes on the floor, brooded somberly in an orchestra seat until we were ready to go over the revised scene. As I finished, Stella Merrick leaned over me, her hand clutching my left shoulder in a grip that hurt. Her teeth were chattering with nervousness.

"How _can_ you be so calm?" she gasped. "I've never seen him as devilish as he is to-night. If you hadn't kept your nerve we'd all have gone to smash. As it is, I have a temperature of a hundred and four!"

I wondered what G.o.dfrey's temperature was. Gibson had not told me.

There must be a fever-chart in the sick-room. It seemed almost as if I could read it. Certainly I could see the jagged peaks of it, the last point running off in a long wavering line of weakness. Perhaps Gibson knew what the temperature was. But when I returned to my seat in the orchestra Gibson was no longer there.

"Open some of those windows," ordered "T. B.," irritably. "It's like a furnace in here."

Was that an ice-cap on G.o.dfrey's head? Of course. The nurse was changing it for a fresh one. For a moment, the first in that endless night, I seemed to see his face, waxen, the sensitive nostrils pinched, the gray eyes open now and staring unseeingly into s.p.a.ce.

"No change," said Gibson's voice.

Another period of time had dragged its way past me like a sluggish snake.

"What o'clock?" I heard myself ask.

Gibson looked at his watch.

"Quarter of two," he told me, snapping the case shut. "I saw Dr.

Weymarth just before I left."

"What did he say?"

Gibson's eyes s.h.i.+fted from mine, which vainly tried to hold them.

"No change," he repeated.

"Was that all?"

Gibson's eyes returned to mine for an instant and s.h.i.+fted again.

"Tell me," I insisted.

"He's disappointed in the heart. It's been holding its own, though the temperature has been terrific from the first. But since midnight--"

"Yes, since midnight--"

"It's not quite so strong."

Gibson's words came slowly, as if against his will. There was a strange silence over the theater. Through it the voice of "T. B."

ripped its way to us.

"Now we'll run through that scene again. And if the author and the ladies and gentlemen of the company will kindly remember that this is a rehearsal, and not an afternoon tea, perhaps we'll get somewhere."

"Billy," I whispered, "I can't bear it."

"I know." Gibson patted my hand. "Sit tight," he murmured. "I'm off again. I'll be back in an hour or so. By then they ought to know."

I watched him slip like a shadow through the dark house, along the wall, and back toward the stage-door. The voice of Stella Merrick was filling the theater. I heard my name.